I just wanna um acknowledge that, you know,
we're proud of the season that we had and um
acknowledge everything that went into it, from our coaching
staff, to the players, to minor league development
scouting. Uh When you get an opportunity to play
in October, it's a reflection of everybody's work and
, um, you know, it came together very
nicely this year. So we got a lot of
work to do. Um We learned a lot about
our team and now it's time to move forward.
Well, the expectations are higher. Um, you
know, we didn't know going into this year that
we would end up winning 86 games being a playoff
team, felt like we were going to be better
, but it's not gonna change like how we go
through our off season. I mean, we're,
we're gonna work just as hard this off season as
we did last off season. And even if we
have won the World Series, the work never ends
, you know, so, uh the expectations are
higher, uh the players I think acknowledged it Thursday
night after we lost and, uh, you know
, that's just part of it, you know,
there's going to be a little bit more of a
, a target on our backs. Um, we're
not gonna up on anybody next year. They're gonna
expect us to be a good team. And with
that comes the responsibility of living up to that,
our offense was, you know, if you,
if you look back on the year it's, it
was acceptable. Um, I mean, we,
the runs for him that we scored over the course
of the year was acceptable, but there were too
many ups and downs. We, we got to
be a little bit more consistent, uh, and
it really starts not so much with slug, you
always want slug, but it starts with getting guys
on base and that's going to be an area that
we're gonna not only address in looking at players we
can acquire, but how can we be better offensively
? You know, how can we develop hitters better
at the major league level and get them to meet
expectations? Well, I don't think you can,
you don't coach guys to take walks, right?
I mean that like JJ just said, that comes
from experience that comes from understanding situations that comes from
controlling your emotions. It comes from understanding what the
pitcher is trying to do and, and even further
what he's capable of doing on a given night.
Um, they did a good job against us in
this series of laying off whether they were borderline or
bigger misses. They did a good job of that
. Um, and our guys, we didn't have
that opportunity as much. Those guys threw a lot
of strikes against us, they challenged us and that's
something that we did remarkably well over the course of
the long season, it showed up in, in
a couple of these games with the Yankees. But
I think our players, like JJ said, will
, will grow, um, and understand that and
understand what their strengths and weaknesses are too because as
they reflect, they'll understand, ok, I,
I expanded a little too much or I put a
pitcher's pitch in play early in the count, maybe
I can get back into it a little bit further
, but there isn't going to be one answer for
all 13 hitters that they all have to do this
. Right. And that comes and goes throughout the
course of a game and a season.